The Baby Job
by BookWorm37
Summary: Two months after the events of "The Thieves and the Baker" we find Cassie locked in a secure military facility for her own protection, and the Leverage team desperately trying to find her. There is only one warning, one message: Find the others. They are waking up. Find the others before it is too late.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Thank you so much for your patience. Here it is: the long awaited sequel to "The Thieves and the Baker." I'm very sorry it took so long for me to start writing, but with grad school kicking my ass it was difficult to find the motivation to write.

* * *

The mess that Hera left in the wake of her demise had been … interesting for the SGC to clean up. It was not the first time that they had to clean a mess spanning multiple states, with civilian witnesses and cameras that captured things that they shouldn't have. It wasn't the first time that they had an uncooperative victim on their hands.

However, this was the first time that Cassandra Fraiser took it upon herself to tell all of the members of the SGC to go straight to Sokar and leave her alone.

"It's go to hell, Cassie!" Mitchell chided her good naturedly, trying to lift the spirits of the woman who was now twelve weeks along in her pregnancy.

She narrowed her hazel eyes at the colonel, one of her hands moving instinctively to the slight pudge on her stomach that was beginning to announce the two lives within. "You're not the one the president placed under house arrest until they give birth, Cameron," she reminded him. She looked around at the stark white walls and sighed, tears pricking at her eyes, "It's not even a house. It's a prison."

Cameron Mitchell studied her from behind the bars that confined her in the SGC extra-terrestrial prison that had confined other threats before, and likely would again. In the corner of the room, out of Cassie's reach, lay a black and metal device that was blinking periodically, it's domed structure hiding the telekinetic interference device Sam had developed a few years back.

Despite the voice in the back of his head that told him she was right, Mitchell's face remained impassive as he replied, "It's to _protect_ you, Cassie. And the babies."

Cassie was too tired of this daily debate to say anything more than, "Yes. Because that worked out so well the last time."

She got up from where she was seated on the simple cot in the cell and walked over to where a skein of yarn sat next to a half-finished cream colored baby blanket. Next to it also sat the start to a baby blue blanket in the same pattern. Mitchell watched her sit down at the table and pick up the cream yarn, her fingers picking up the speed easily. Her light brown hair fell over her face like a veil as she bent her head down to watch her progress.

After about fifteen more minutes of watching the expectant mother create one of two baby blankets, Mitchell stood up and wordlessly walked out of the room. Behind the veil of her hair, Cassie lifted her eyes to watch him leave, her fingers never faltering as they looped the yarn over the hook and pulled it through, adding breadth and length to the blanket in her hands.

Once she was sure that Mitchell was gone, Cassie let the tears fall. She was trapped. Again. By people who professed to have nothing but her best interests at heart. She sniffled slightly as she lifted her head to look at the sole window in the room, placed high above her head and so far out of reach. She didn't even know where she was.

To be fair, Mitchell had been put in charge of her care, along with Dr. Lam, as a favor to General Jack O'Neill. The guards who were on duty were nothing but polite to her in their own MP sort of way. She _was_ treated more as a guest under armed guard then a prisoner … but that didn't make the lack of freedom any easier to bear.

Cassie reached up to her right ear, the one that was facing away from the cameras, and felt for the inside of her ear. When her hand came in contact with the hard device that had been smuggled into her cell with the yarn and hooks she had in her lap. A slight bit of pressure on the metal switch attached to the small device made it turn on and the sound of voices filled her head.

"Cassie, you there?" Hardison asked through the link.

She glanced up at the security camera in the corner, knowing it was hooked up to audio as well. With a sideways glance toward the interference device that was ineffectually trying to block her natural mental abilities, Cassie reached inside her mind to the place where she could feel her abilities lurking. With a mental jab she found the telepathy and mentally whispered back, "_Yeah, I'm here. Going insane, but I'm here."_

"Cassie? It's Nate," said ringleader of her favorite band of thieves came on the line. "We have a plan to get you out of there. Just hold tight."

"_Not much else I can do at the moment,_" Cassie rolled her eyes as she continued to crochet for the benefit of the cameras. This blanket was almost done.

"We know," Nate replied, sounding as supportive as he could from the outside world. He'd never been locked up like that before, so there was little he could say that would help. "We'll get you out soon. I promise, Cassie."

"_I just want to know what's going on here_," Cassie bemoaned for the umpteenth time. "_Jack made sure I'm on a tight guard. The only people who've been to see me are the highest members of the SGC … and even then it's mostly been SG-1 and Dr. Lam. Dr. Lee has dropped by twice but I'm not too sure what that was about. Oh, and one visit from Colonel Maynard and General Landry_." Audibly she sighed as she fastened off the end of the blanket and used brute force to break the yarn. They hadn't allowed her a pair of scissors or even a thread cutter.

After weaving in the ends of yarn at either end of the blanket, Cassie set down the now finished cloth and picked up the light blue one that was still in progress. She made fast work of finding the loop that marked her progress, inserted the hook and began to work on expanding the blanket.

"Cassie?" a different voice came on the line, causing her heart to beat just a little faster and her pupils to dilate slightly. "It's Eliot. Hang on. I'm coming for you."

She closed her eyes and took a shaky breath inward at the sound of his voice. "_Please hurry, Eliot. I'm going bonkers in here._" Absentmindedly she rubbed her protruding belly where she could feel two heartbeats, "_I don't think the babies like it very much either_."

"I know," Eliot replied, his voice gruff and confident. "I'm coming."

For a reason she couldn't quite name, Cassie believed him.

* * *

What Eliot didn't tell Cassie was that there was a very good reason why he was so adamant about knowing the danger she was in if she stayed in SGC custody much longer. He was also very adamant that it had to be him and his team that rescued her. Mostly him. His team was only involved because they had met Cassie and refused to let him do it alone.

"Look, man," Hardison had reasoned with him in the early days after Cassie had been taken by the SGC, "I helped build the software that their security runs off. I know Sam and I know how Sam works."

Eliot glared at the younger man, "What are you trying to say, Hardison? Spit it out."

Hardison smirked slightly as he pulled up some schematics on the main screens, "I found the back door."

* * *

The dreams had started the night after the docks and the showdown with Hera. Dreams of the most incredible things that made him think he was going mad.

First there was that woman – Ganos Lal – surrounded by a glowing light, whispering things into his mind that he forgot as soon as he awoke. He remembered her eyes, though. A sad, piercing brown gaze that made him want to weep with the beauty behind those eyes. Those eyes seemed to accuse and encourage him at the same time. _Find Cassandra. Protect the offspring._

It was then that he started calling in markers and tracked her progress across the country. The stop in Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, North Dakota … the SGC took her in the most bizarre and roundabout route before finally settling her down in the middle of Utah. Now came the hard part for Eliot: the waiting and gathering information.

Then came the memories that seemed to assault him in his sleep about two weeks later. They were not memories of his own past, but rather ones that included Ganos Lal and a man she seemed to love quite openly and freely. Eliot could see it in the way she took his hand, the way she helped him with the project (what looked like a metal and stone box) that consumed his spare waking moments, the way she tilted back her head and laughed with him at a shared joke. _Amelius_.

Eliot didn't know how he had known the man's name, but he had, as surely as he had known his own.

The visits had started shortly after that. Sometimes it was Ganos, sometimes it was Amelius. They never came together, but they were urging him toward something important. Something to do with Cassie and her babies. It was like they were trying to tell him something but he just couldn't understand. There was something blocking his ability to see what was right in front of his face.

"There was a saying, here on Earth, a few centuries ago." Eliot turned around and fell immediately into a fighting stance. He hadn't heard or sensed any disturbance in his dwelling. No way someone had just snuck up behind him.

It was Amelius. At least, it would be if he had a corporeal form. As it was his form was only vaguely corporeal and was also surrounded by the same glowing white light that he had also seen surrounded Ganos Lal when she had visited Cassie.

"There was a saying," Amelius repeated, "You cannot see your reflection in running water."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Eliot groused at the man-thing in front of him.

Amelius rolled his eyes at the human, "You can only see your reflection when the water is still, lad. Still your mind and your heart and the answer will be apparent."

Eliot glared at the man for a moment more, not knowing whether to trust him or not but knowing there was very little choice in the matter. Amelius's shape moved closer to Eliot and the hitter could feel something like a warm calm begin to descend upon him, like how he had felt holding Cassie in his arms but without the tingling of other parts of his body. "Close your eyes, Eliot Spencer," the Ascended being commanded softly. Like a father explaining something to his young son.

Almost involuntarily Eliot's eyes closed and his breathing evened out into the rhythm he used for meditation. As soon as his mind stilled he began to be assaulted with images and information that seemed to fill his mind to the tipping point. The input of information started out slow: with the same story he had been seeing for the past two weeks of two people in love thousands of years ago.

His eyes shot open suddenly and Eliot's breathing increased dramatically as he stared in horror and shock at the man in front of him. He shook his head as he started to hyperventilate with the knowledge that he was processing. Amelius stood along and waited patiently while the man processed all the information that was flooding through his mind. Eliot dropped to his knees in shock, his hands coming up to cradle his head as he let out a wordless cry.

It was a long time –Eliot couldn't have told you how long – before Eliot was calm enough to speak again. He looked up at Amelius and shook his head, "No. That's … impossible. I'm from Earth. I'm _human_."

Amelius looked at him as one does a particularly obtuse student, "Come now, Eliot, did you never find it odd that in your line of work you were able to withstand so much? So many injuries that, while not fatal, would have left scars and damages to your body that you would not recover from." Amelius's gaze softened slightly as he added, "Your feet have not left your chosen path in nearly ten years, Eliot Spencer. While not impossible for a human who has chosen the way of the warrior, it is quite rare and extraordinary to do so without so much as a limp or a torn muscle or any number of other injuries that refused to heal properly."

Eliot could hear the truth in his words even as he fought against it. It was true that he'd always been exceptionally good at healing and simply not getting injured. But did that make him alien?

"You are not alien in the sense that you mean, lad," Amelius continued as if he could hear his thoughts. For all Eliot knew, he could. "Our people colonized this world millennia ago. Terra was one of our crowning glories, next to Atlantis and Celestis. If not for the plague, you would have been born here a thousand years ago. As the one you call Cassandra would have been."

Eliot shook his head again as he tried to wrap his mind around all the new information –most of which he had no idea what to do with or when/if it would ever be useful. Faster than light travel. Wormholes. Naquadah. Delta waves. The science behind the Stargate. Something called an ark of truth. What the hell did a "telchak" have to do with a healing … cube? What the hell _was_ a telchak?

"Why tell me now? Why not before?" Eliot asked, the fear and confusion beginning to fade in the face of anger at the implications. "If you're my father … why wait 37 years to tell me?"

Amelius looked grave as he replied, "Oh, my boy, I've had to wait far longer than that."

"I don't like repeating myself," Eliot ground out as he stood to his full height again. "Tell me: why now?"

"The others are awakening now," Amelius told his son. If he hadn't been a part of the conversation, Eliot would have snorted at the absurdity of actually hearing that statement spoken aloud. "There were six of you placed in stasis. You and Cassandra are but two. Find the others. Find the others like you and you will find your answers."

Eliot had more questions but no time to ask them as Amelius looked up over his shoulder, as if he heard someone enter the room. "Your mother is calling me. She needs help to keep Adria contained," he said before floating away in a small ball of light.

The newly self-discovered Alteran watched the spot where the light had disappeared through the ceiling for a long while after it was gone. He came back to himself when he felt his cell phone ring. He picked it up where It lay on his coffee table only to realize that it didn't start to ring until his hand touched it.

The caller I.D. revealed it to be Hardison. He accepted the call, "What?"

"I found her."

* * *

Nimue came to visit her in her dreams each night to keep her company. She wouldn't risk appearing in front of the cameras that surrounding Cassie's cell, but the mind link they shared helped calm the sea of emotions inside her.

"Your mind is unlocking and awakening," Nimue told her one night in her dream. They were sitting on a hillside, overlooking one of the cities on Celestia before its destruction.

Cassie nodded and glanced at her, "I know. I can feel it. Why is it happening now, though? I don't know what it means."

"It means the start of something strange and powerful and terrible, Cassandra," Nimue replied vaguely. "It means the others are awakening."

"Others?" Cassie frowned, "You mean the other children that the Asgard took away from Nirrti." It wasn't a question, although Nimue did not in confirmation.

"Including the father of your children," her mother reminded her. She looked up into the breeze and smiled slightly, "I believe he had already awoken."

"Who is he?" Cassie asked, still as curious as ever.

"All in due time, my child. If you look for it too intently, you cannot see."

"I've heard that one before," Cassie turned back to the view of the planet she had never seen and likely never would visit in corporeal form. "All that bullshit about candlelight and fires and food."

"It's only … bullshit, as you say, if you do not take the time to still your mind before allowing the question to enter your mind."

"I don't understand you sometimes, Mother." Cassie shook her head, her hands falling to cradle her stomach where two innocent lives grew entwined.

"There is not just a generation separating us, my daughter, but a thousand years and a whole plain of existence as well," Nimue's apparition smiled softly. "Your children will grow strong and good. Their father will reveal himself when the time is right."

Cassie took comfort from those words even as she frowned, "What about the others? Where are they? _Who_ are they?"

Nimue's smile turned sad as she replied, "I cannot tell you where or who. Only that you will know them when the time comes. Just as your mind has awoken to its true potential, so has theirs. When you see them, you will know."

"You said before that not all of them were on Earth. The Asgard spread them through the stars. How am I supposed to find them when the Stargate will activate the bomb inside me?"

Nimue moved closer to her daughter so that she could wrap her arms around her shoulders. "So many questions, Cassandra. Curiosity is the desire for knowledge and nothing is more dangerous than desire. Give it time and remember the lesson I have taught you: the hard and strong will fall –"

"But the soft and weak will overcome." Cassandra smiled slightly before resting her head on Nimue's shoulder, "Yes, Mother, I remember."

* * *

A/N: Until next time. Tata my loves!


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I'm so sorry about the long wait. Hopefully things should be much faster now that the semester is over! Happy The World Didn't End Yesterday!

* * *

Cassie spent the next three days steadily working on her son's blanket in silence. Utter and absolute silence of the sort that crept into your bones and made you start to go mad. Eliot and his friends hadn't been in contact since they told her that they were coming for her. Mitchell and the others from the SGC hadn't been by to see her.

There was a low electric buzz in the air. She could taste it, like the calm before the storm.

With nothing else to do, Cassandra let her mind go over the information her mother had spent the last two months slowly depositing in her cranium. One thing that was common throughout her mother's teachings and the information/memories in her head was the importance of patience. Although it was difficult to accept, she knew that patience was the way to go at the moment. She would bide her time and wait.

* * *

In a far different sort of prison, thousands of miles away, off the coast of Australia, a woman sat before an art easel, paint brush in hand, surrounded by half completed canvasses and high quality oil paints. The painting in front of her was done in greys and blues that swirled together to imply shapes and letters that she had never seen before. At least, she had never seen them in her waking hours.

The yacht rocked gently back and forth with the waves of the ocean, but her hand and easel were used to such treatment as she continued to paint. Behind her she could hear the sounds of a man entering into the room, stepping over the threshold loudly to make sure she heard.

Not sparing him so much as a pause in her work, our artist gritted her teeth slightly at the intrusion when the intruder's perfectly manicured hand came to rest on the shoulder attached to the hand holding the brush.

"More abstract art, my dear?" his cultured, South African accent asked. Only years of practice and discipline kept her from recoiling at his touch.

"Nothing _but_ abstract, Solomon," she replied in a small voice, not wanting to anger him.

His hand tightened its grip on her shoulder, causing her to tense. She was already bruised by those fingers and she didn't relish repeating that experience. "Not always, Sari." He released her shoulder and stalked over to a stack of finished paintings on the other side of the room. Pulling one out he held it up and turned to face her, his steel eyes glinting dangerously. "I want to see their faces, my dear."

Sari's soft chocolate eyes flickered to the oil painting he held in his death grip. It was of a woman dressed in a white sundress, something like lightning surrounding her body as her hand reached out toward the unknown, a threat unheard hiding behind her eyes. In the back of her mind, far out of the reach of Solomon and his power-hungry hands, she recognized the woman as being like her, an outsider, who held power but couldn't use it. Maybe this woman, too, was gifted with paranormal abilities. Her eyes were an unfamiliar hazel, and her hair a light brown that fanned out as if it was blown back by the wind. She wasn't particularly beautiful, by any means, but Sari knew they were the same.

She let her lightly made-up eyelids hood her eyes as she reminded him, "I can only paint what I see." Outwardly she let her body relax as much as she could as Solomon stalked back over to her. He reached out and caressed the stop of her head, messing up the perfectly combed locks of black hair.

"Then you'll simply have to See something a bit more worthwhile." He let her go and turned to walk toward the door. Once there he paused and turned to look at her again, "Or perhaps you've outlived your usefulness, my dear. Pity, I was sure you had a few more months in you before you joined our sister and mother in the whore house."

After the door slammed shut behind him, Sari felt the familiar hot tears well up behind her eyes. She slammed her hand down on the table that held her paints, stifling a scream filled with rage. Faces swam behind her eyes, men and women –the woman whose picture Solomon pointed to. _Cassandra_. She knew that was her name. Just as strongly as she knew if she painted any more faces or locations for her brother, he'd start moving against his employers and he'd win.

But if she didn't … she couldn't paint while drugged out on a dirty mattress while fifty men a day pounded in to her without the simple protection of a condom.

Sari composed herself while the voices she heard in her sleep vied for her attention and tried to beg her to stop, that there was another way. She shook her head and dried her tears. If there was a better way, she didn't see it.

She focused her mind on a scene that had appeared to her weeks ago. Not a face this time, but something equally important for her brother. With a calm and steady stroke on a fresh canvas, she started to paint a mountain.

* * *

In a galaxy far, far, away, in the not so distant past (in fact, 4.38 Earth hours before Sari's confrontation with her brother) the boy awoke.

Awoke is possibly the wrong term for what happened, but it is the closest one that the great, all powerful narrator can find. You see, the boy's body was already awake, but it wasn't something he was in control of when his mind woke up.

There was something inside him that called itself a god. It had been inside him for the past fifteen Earth years, halting the boy's growth just prior to puberty setting in. One day he had been a regular boy on the planet Lyrica, protected by the Asgard, and then the Evil Ones came and he had been Chosen by the Gods to be one of their children. Every day since then had been nothing but pain and torment for his mind, body, and soul. There was nothing he could do to regain control of his body or his life, and so he let his mind go to sleep.

But now something was different. In his sleep state, the part of his mind where the Evil One couldn't reach, a voice reached out to him and a woman appeared.

"_Lief_," she whispered into the quietest recesses of his mind. "_My son, you must awake now. There is work to be done_."

"_Who are you?"_ his dream-self asked. He saw inside his mind as two spheres of energy. His was a dark green color, similar to redwood needles, hers –for he was positive it was a female who was talking to him –was a pale blue, like the sky just after midday, when the suns have begun to descend and go away for the night.

"_My name is in the wind through the trees, the sunlight on the flowers. I am your mother._"

"_My mother is dead. I watched through these eyes as my body killed her._" The Evil One had to push down the sudden urge Lief's body had to cry. Outwardly there was barely more than a twitch.

"_There is much that you must know, my son, and little time_," she replied inside his mind. _"You must trust me. Peer into the darkness and you will find the clarity you seek._"

And he did. The knowledge and truth of who and what he was hit him like a tidal wave, that most deadly form of water. He felt his mother in his mind tell him to let the chaos and information ripple through him and carry him along, don't fight it.

Lief wasn't sure how long it lasted. It would be impossible to say considering he had just woken up from a fifteen year dream. But he knew now. He knew how to repress the Evil One inside his body. He knew how to be soft and overcome; he knew how to create unity without weapons; he knew the way to Tera to find those like him who were also awakening.

He couldn't remove the Evil One himself. No, it must be another like him who performed the cleansing for him. But it was okay now, as he gave the command in the voice of the Evil One to transport down to the planet below them from this ship.

His hand was on the device known as the DHD according to his mother whose name was Blodeuwedd. Lief hesitated. He looked down at the weapon that was wrapped around his hand. The hand he was using to press in the coordinates for Tera.

Almost in a trance he stopped and stepped back from the platform. Lief took off the weapon and started clawing at his clothes with both hands. Soon all of the finery was in a pile on the ground. Townspeople he was supposed to lead as god and king stood watching from the shadows, the same as the guards the Evil One had managed to keep with him during the years of war and rebellion.

In the place his mother showed him, Lief called up a gift of fire hot enough to melt the naquadah laced through the things on the ground. With a wave of his hand it transformed from a set of recognizable items to a pile of molten metal and then to barely a mark on the ground as the earth welcomed it back home.

Lief looked up at those hiding in the distance, unabashed by his naked form. "You are free."

With that he turned back around to the DHD and pressed the coordinates for what his mother was calling the Theta Base. When the rings in front of him began to spin and connect to some other part in the universe, Lief smiled slightly. He knew better than to allow himself to feel more than calm at the moment. He knew he couldn't openly desire the removal of the Evil One or his defenses would slip.

But as he stepped through the Stargate into a world unknown, Lief was at peace for the first time since his body stopped aging and became the host to a creature so horrible he refused to mention its name.

There was work to do.

* * *

It was 03:42 in the morning. Cassandra didn't know why but she was suddenly wide awake. From what she could tell the twins were still sleeping inside her womb, having worn themselves out with all the growing they were doing. They seemed to be done with the game of "Who can stand on Mommy's bladder the longest?" and had moved on to "Who can push harder on Mommy's ribs?"

That didn't matter, though. The babies hadn't woken her up.

She quickly and quietly scanned the room her cell was in. Her gaze quickly settled on the black device in the corner that the SGC thought was still disrupting her telekinetic and telepathic powers. With her eyes firmly on the rhythmic white light, Cassie let her mind probe out along the edges of herself to the room around her and the rooms around that.

Oh. That was interesting.

It look less than thirty seconds before she was back in her own mind, staring at the door intently. She sat up in the bed and put her slippers on her stockinged feet without thinking about it. One hand self-consciously went up to attempt to smooth her hair as much as possible.

_He _was coming.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Sorry this one is so short, but this scene really needs to stand alone, in my humble opinion. Hopefully more up in a few days.

* * *

A smile played at her lips as she repeated the news in her own mind. He was coming for her. Finally.

_Took you long enough_, she telepathically whispered into his mind.

The com in her ear bustled back into life as Eliot verbally grumbled, "Could you _not_ do that, Cas? It's kind of creepy to hear you up here."

_Make me_, she taunted him back, knowing she shouldn't push it too far or he really would make her stop when the team got through the different doors that separated them.

"As touching as ya'll little moment is," Hardison piped in from his mobile command center in Lucille the Van, "we better hurry otherwise they'll find out. And then we'll all be in some seriously hot water."

"Cassie?" Nate's voice now cut in over the com line, "Can you … feel where the guards are and tell us? Not that I don't trust Hardison's equipment, but this is going to be tricky."

_No problem_, Cassie replied before going deep within herself and then casting herself outward to s_ee_ where the life forces around her were. Eliot's team, having never been off Earth, felt and looked different in her mind than the SGC goons.

The MPs were everywhere, just like they always were. _Do you have control of the cameras?_ She asked Hardison telepathically.

"Yes," he replied assuredly. "They're on a loop of the last hour. With a little luck they won't know the difference until you're out and we're safely away."

Cassie smiled tersely at that phrase. _I doubt I'll ever be "safely away," Hardison. I'm not sure I'll ever truly be safe again._

Eliot looked different in her mind than he did before. She frowned as she mentally watched him come within a few feet of one of the patrols before he stopped, as if sensing them on the other side of the wall, and redirected his route. There was something different about him that part of her was trying very hard to _not_ notice as he slowly and methodically made his way closer to her cage. Like if she watched him out of the corner of her eye at twilight she just might see it there.

Something else suddenly caught her attention in the air shafts. _Parker, stop!_ She nearly shouted mentally at the other woman.

Parker obediently froze her position, one hand up slightly as she had been about to move forward. _Back up slowly_, Cassie directed her. _You were about to push on one of the silent alarms._

The thief looked down at the metal grating in front of her. Even her trained eyes could perceive no difference between it and the metal surrounding it. "How can you tell?"

_I can hear the electro-magnetic frequency it's putting off. Asgard tech. You can't see it. Go back twenty yards and you'll see another shaft veering off to the east of the building. Take that until you come to the third shaft pointing north. I'm in the room below the second opening on that air shaft_, Cassie directed her using her mental map of her prison.

"Thanks," Parker said as she carefully followed Cassandra's instructions.

It was only Parker and Eliot inside the building. Cassie wasn't sure how they had managed to get that far by themselves, but had to admit that time and time again SG1 had proven that smaller operations were less likely to detect when done correctly.

A few short minutes later and Cassie could feel Parker's energy signature directly over her head in the air shafts above. Eliot was a short distance away ducking guards at every turn with what seemed like almost superhuman skill and ease. His hand was on the doorknob. That last door that separated her from seeing his beautiful, careworn eyes once again.

The door opened and Eliot, dressed in the same fatigues as the rest of the MPs on duty that night, appeared, zat strapped to his right thigh and a service blade strapped to the left. Her smile lit up the room from within, especially when it was returned by him.

Eliot took a few steps into the room, shutting the door behind him. His features only slightly betrayed the relief he felt at seeing Cassie unharmed and relatively safe.

He was halfway to her cage when Cassandra held up a hand in a motion for him to stop. She felt Colonel Mitchel and a team of soldiers closing in on the central room. _Hold your position, Parker,_ she firmly told the thief so that she wouldn't be dropping in to more trouble than she already was.

Less than five seconds later the three doors around the room burst open and Mitchel, followed by a team of seven MPs –three of which Cassandra had never seen before, set up standard formation at each of the exits.

"What do you think you're doing, Spencer?" Mitchel asked calmly, his gun trained on the other man's head.

Eliot didn't turn around to face the soldiers, instead he locked eyes with Cassie and replied, "What I have to do to make sure she's safe, Mitchell."

Mitchel's head came up slightly from the sight of his gun. His eyes were hard as he asked, "Do you really think you can keep her safer than we can? You can't even break her out of here without being caught and stopped. How could you protect her from the threats out there against her and the babies?"

"That which is at rest is easily restrained. You would think you'd know this by now," Cassandra remarked calmly, verbally speaking for the first time since the incident started.

While the guards tried to process what the hell that meant, Cassandra stood up and looked first at the black machine in the corner that was meant to keep her mental powers in check, and then at the air vent above. In a great show of theatrics, she looked at Eliot and mentally willed the guns that were a danger to the man before her, and her own safety, into the air and out of the hands of the MPs.

"It's safe to come down now, Parker," she said aloud, her eyes still locked with Eliot's. Her left hand reached out and picked up the baby blankets that were sitting at the foot of the bed while Eliot opened the door to the cell and let her out.

Parker seamlessly let herself out of the air shaft, causing more than one appreciative look from the guards as she skipped over to Cassie and Eliot and gave Cassie a brief hug.

Cassie kept her attention focused on the guards so that they were immobilized while she reunited with the two thieves momentarily before Eliot nudged her toward the door. "We gotta go, Cas."

She nodded and led the way to the door that Mitchell had stationed himself at with two other guards. When she was near him, Cassie knelt down on one knee and whispered in his ear, "I want you to remember and tell the rest of the SGC that the only reason I stayed was because I wanted to. That device in the corner stopped working after a week and a half. You know it's not safe for me here anymore, and I know it's not safe for me here anymore." She stood back up with a little help from Eliot before adding louder, "Tell Jack that I can take care of myself."

Stepping past the guards, Cassie motioned for Eliot and Parker to follow close behind. Once they made their way through the complex and to the waiting van with the other members of the Leverage team, Cassie released the guards and their guns from the hold she had on them, letting them go about their business in peace.


End file.
